


Little Supernovas

by bepreparedf0rhell



Category: Slipknot (Band)
Genre: Angst, Death, Grief, M/M, but there's a little closure at the end, nothing here is happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:14:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22202413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bepreparedf0rhell/pseuds/bepreparedf0rhell
Summary: "say you want to stay, you want me too.say you'll never die, you'll always haunt me.i want to know that i belong to you...say you'll haunt me."say you'll haunt me; stone sourin which one of them is gone and both of them need to figure out what the fuck that means.
Relationships: Jim Root/Corey Taylor
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15





	Little Supernovas

**Author's Note:**

> so, this is... kind of a lot but i love it very much. i didn't tag it with major character death because reasons BUT one of them is definitely No Longer Living in this, just so everyone knows.

_“Oh, fuck. Oh… fuck. Jim?”_

_Corey’s voice is raw and scratchy and immediately he knows something isn’t right. He feels… off somehow. His whole body is stiff and he’s not sure why; he doesn’t remember doing anything that would’ve caused it. In fact… in fact, he can’t really remember anything. He remembers being drunk off his face, remembers waking Jim up in the middle of the night and asking him to come get him. He remembers being in the car, and then… nothing. There’s nothing after that. Why the fuck isn’t there anything after that?_

~

“Oh, fuck,” Jim whimpers as he steps over the threshold of his house, his feet plodding along heavily even though he wishes he could’ve just collapsed on the ground on the side of the road and melted into the dirt. The emergency room doctor’s voice is still pounding through his head like it’s on a loudspeaker and he wishes desperately he knew how to make it stop.

_“Mister Root? I’m so sorry, but he’s gone.”_

Such simple words, perfectly innocent on their own, but strung together to make the most painful sentence he’d ever had to hear. For half a second, Jim had thought the doctor meant that Corey had left, that he’d simply snuck out a window or something. He’d gotten a little annoyed. Then he’d looked up and seen the look on the face of the man in front of him and had immediately realized that’s not what it was at all. 

Jim hadn’t even had the time to tell the doctor off for how much he hated being called ‘Mister Root’. He hadn’t had time to call anyone, though he knew he was going to need to. All he’d had the time to do in that moment was sign some paperwork and get himself patched up and get the fuck out of there. 

Now as he looks around his own empty home, he collapses onto the floor just inside the door. He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s going to do, he really doesn’t.

~

_Corey’s finally able to look around, to get a hold on his surroundings. He’s not in Jim’s car anymore. He’s not at the party at the house of the dude he didn’t even really know. He’s not anywhere he recognizes._

_Wait a second. Wait just a fucking second. He’s in a morgue. He’s in a goddamn morgue. What the fuck?_

_“What the fuck am I doing in a morgue?” he asks out loud, startled a second later when the door clangs open and a man dressed in a lab coat walks in._

_“I don’t know what kind of fucking joke this is, but it’s not funny. Where the fuck is the peach?” he asks, using an old nickname for Jim that he hasn’t even really thought about in years. The man in front of him goes about his business, not even looking up. Another man walks into the room holding a clipboard._

_“This isn’t fucking funny! What the fuck is going on?!” Corey demands, but the second man doesn’t even halfway flinch either. Corey stomps around the room, doing everything in his power to make as much noise as he possibly can. He realizes at once that for some reason he can’t make any noise at all. His footsteps should be loud, especially given the boots he’s wearing, but they’re not. He’s doing everything in his power to throw things and slam his hands on the various surfaces in the room, but for some reason he doesn’t seem to be able to do that either._

_“What in fucking hell?” he questions quietly, panic rising heavily in his chest. A second later, one of the men starts speaking and it startles him so hard that he feels that feeling you get when you choke on a bit of spit at the back of your mouth. He’s painfully aware, though, that he doesn’t seem to have any spit to choke on. Instead, he just sputters dumbly and flips back around to face the men._

_“Taylor, Corey Todd,” the man holding the clipboard says, and Corey’s blue eyes go wide._

_“Oh, fuck,” he mumbles, pretty sure he’s figuring out what’s going on._

_The other man opens one of the drawers on the wall and pulls out a body in a thick black bag._

_“Car accident. Our customer was in the passenger seat and was hit head on by a drunk driver,” Clipboard Guy says, and Corey feels sick._

_“Oh, fuck,” he repeats, breathless._

_The man goes on to list more intimate details about Corey, things that are definitely specific to him. He’d almost hoped that somehow it was some other dude with his boring-ass name. It doesn’t seem to be, though._

_“Alright, let’s take a look,” the first guy, or Not-Clipboard-Guy, as Corey has been referring to him in his head says, and Corey takes a deep breath and holds it. Not-Clipboard-Guy unzips the bag, and there’s absolutely no doubt in Corey’s mind that the body lying in front of him is -or was?- him. He gags, but nothing comes up even though his stomach feels like it’s about to overflow with bile. He can’t look anymore, doesn’t want to see what the men are doing, doesn’t want to know what happened to him in any more detail than he already does._

_“Oh, fuck,” he repeats one more time, a thought hitting him like a wheelbarrow full of bricks. “Jim.”_

~

Jim is jolted awake by a knock at his front door. He’s still sitting on the floor just inside the house. He has no clue how long he’s been there; could’ve been a few hours, could’ve been a few days. He uncurls his long legs from underneath himself and stretches them, wincing as his knees pop and crackle both from being on the floor and from sitting in the same position for so long.

His face feels dry and puffy and even though he doesn’t particularly remember crying, he knows he must’ve and it must’ve been quite a bit. 

He caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror at the hospital and knows he has a black eye from the crash, but it’s almost swollen completely shut now. His arm - the right one, the one he’d reached out in a stupid and foiled attempt to somehow keep Corey safe - was broken and very sore in its sling. The doctors had offered to give him pain meds and he’d turned them down in an attempt to just get home faster, and now he desperately wishes he’d taken them. His whole body is sore as he stands, and the person at the door knocks again. 

“I’m fucking coming,” he mumbles, his mouth feeling like it’s full of marbles and dry as a desert. He shuffles to the door and unlocks it, turning and walking toward the kitchen without bothering to open it. It doesn’t matter to him who’s there - nothing particularly matters to him at the moment. 

The door opens behind him and in a second there’s a flurry of heavy footsteps, black clothing, and black hair, and Jim’s being stopped and pulled into a tight hug. Mick’s hurting him, crushing his broken arm between them, but it doesn’t matter. Jim’s crying again just at the gesture and nothing fucking matters other than Mick’s strong arms around him, feeling like he’s gluing the broken pieces that were once him back together for at least a moment. 

“Oh god, Jim, oh god I’m so fucking sorry,” Mick mumbles into Jim’s neck, and Jim chokes out a heavy sob in response. Even over his own sobs, Jim’s very aware that Mick is crying too, which is something he’s never seen before. When Paul passed, Mick had shut himself in his house and refused to speak to anyone anytime he was feeling vulnerable about it. This, though... this is new and Jim’s not sure he can fucking handle it, not that he’s sure he can handle anything at the moment. 

Jim wraps his good arm around Mick and they stand there for a long time, holding each other up as their tears spill down each other’s shirts. When Mick finally sniffles his sobs to a close and pulls away enough to look up at Jim, his eyes go wide. 

“Jesus, you look like shit,” he says, and Jim rolls his eyes. “I mean… I’m sorry. I know. You just… you don’t look good, Jim,” he says more gently, and Jim sniffles and shrugs. 

“My… my boyfriend just died,” Jim says, the words feeling like a foreign language that he doesn’t speak as they spill out of his mouth. Suddenly he’s crying again, and he’s not sure he’ll ever stop. He wants to flood the fucking house with his tears and drown in it, and that’s just what he’s planning to do as Mick starts gently shushing him and reaches up to tuck a strand of hair behind his ear. 

“I know. I know,” Mick says, pulling Jim back into a hug but being more careful this time to avoid the broken arm. “I know.”

~

_Corey’s outside Jim’s house. He’s got no fucking clue how he got there, but he thought about Jim, wanted to see Jim, and suddenly there he is. Maybe that’s how this whole… ghost thing works? Wait, is he a ghost? Is that what this actually is? He’s not sure._

_Either way, he watches as Mick pulls into the driveway. Good, he thinks. It’s good Mick’s here. Mick’s Jim’s best friend, probably the only one that can potentially actually make him feel better, if even just a little bit._

_Corey watches as Mick opens the door to the house. He catches a glimpse of Jim inside that makes him feel sick again. Oh god, his boy looks so fucking wrecked. He’s never seen him look so fucking wrecked. If he could puke, he would. He wants to scream but doesn’t want to disrupt them, but then remembers they can’t hear him so he screams anyway. He screams until his throat feels like he’s swallowed a glass full of needles and then he screams some more._

_Fuck. He’d wanted to see Jim so badly, but he hadn’t thought about any of this. He hadn’t thought about how much it was going to fucking hurt. Obviously he’d known Jim was going to be upset, but he hadn’t thought about how bad it was going to be._

_He takes a couple of shaky steps towards the front door and realizes almost accidentally that he can walk right through it. He stumbles into the house and falls into a heap on the floor. Mick and Jim are in the kitchen; Corey can hear them though he can’t make out what they’re saying and he stands and brushes himself off even though he’s pretty sure dirt and debris aren’t going to stick to him as a… ghost? Wow, that still feels weird even just to think. Whatever._

_He walks into the kitchen and closes his eyes when he sees the state of Jim close up. His longish waves of soft brown hair are matted down with sweat and shoved into a bun at the top of his head, something Corey’s pretty sure Mick did just to keep them out of Jim’s face. One of his eyes is covered in bluish black bruising and swollen almost entirely shut and his arm… oh god, his arm._

_Suddenly, Corey’s having flashes of memory that knock him on his ass once more. Jim lecturing him on why he shouldn’t have gone to the party in the first place. Corey apologizing, not wanting to fight and honestly hoping to get his dick sucked when they get back to Jim’s place. Jim stopping at the stop sign at the intersection just a street down from the house. Jim moving through the stop sign when it’s his turn. Jim screaming about something that Corey was too drunk to make out. Jim’s arm slamming across Corey’s stomach to try and protect him somehow._

_“Fuck! Cor, no!”_

_Those are the last words he remembers hearing and when he snaps back to the present, his glassy eyes focus on Jim at his kitchen island again. Jim’s sitting there silently while Mick talks quietly, not really saying anything but knowing Jim well enough to know he doesn’t like the quiet. Mick’s making him tea, Corey thinks._

_Corey closes his eyes, wishing with everything he has left that he could cry. He can’t, though, and so he just has to sit there for a while and stare at his boy and wish desperately that he could just fucking touch him._

~

“It’s my fucking fault, Mick,” Jim says miserably, the tea that had been made for him discarded on the coffee table in front of them. Mick had helped him to the living room and wrapped him in a soft blanket, but it didn’t matter. None of these stupid little things were going to make him feel better. None of them were going to change the truth.

Mick’s immediately shaking his head. 

“Jim, no. No, it’s not.”

“You weren’t there. I could’ve… I could’ve driven faster to get us home or I could’ve gone a different way, or I could’ve paid more attention at that fucking stop sigh. I could’ve saved him. Somehow, I could’ve fucking saved him,” Jim sobs, and Mick’s shaking his head again. 

“No, you couldn’t have. This is not your fault, and you know damn well that wherever he is, he doesn’t blame you. This was an accident, Jim, a terrible fucking accident and it is not your fault,” Mick tries to assure him, but Jim’s not having it. He’s hysterical for what feels like the hundredth time just in the hour Mick’s been there and he doesn’t want to be consoled. He wants to be upset, wants to be fucking mad at himself, wants to throw his stupid fucking temper tantrum because it helps him forget that this is all real. 

And so, Mick lets him. Jim unwraps himself from the blanket and starts by throwing the stupid fucking teacup at the wall. Both of them watch as it hits, watch as the hot liquid runs down the paint. Mick doesn’t move a muscle from where he’s sitting on the couch, doesn’t say a word, just sits there quietly watching as Jim moves around the living room and throws and breaks various things, screaming incoherently as he goes. 

Finally, after about ten minutes, he seems to have his fill and turns to Mick.

“I just want to sleep. I just want to fucking sleep forever,” he says, and Mick nods and moves to him, helping him upstairs and into clean clothes. He helps Jim maneuver his long limbs under the covers of the bed and goes to head towards the chair in the corner of the room, but Jim catches his wrist to stop him. 

“Don’t leave me,” he whimpers, and Mick nods and slips under the covers with him, sitting beside him and pulling the bun out of his hair so that he can slowly comb his fingers through it.

~

_A few weeks go by and Corey doesn’t have any more of a grip on the whole ghost thing than he did the first second he figured it out. He follows Jim to his funeral - his fucking funeral! How fucking weird is that to say?_

_All of his friends and family are there. All of the members of both Slipknot and Stone Sour are there. There’s even some fans gathered outside with candles and flowers. The whole thing’s really nice if he’s being honest, but it’s still just so fucking weird._

_Jim says some words and so do a few other people. It’s fucking surreal, and it’s not until he’s watching Jim and Mick walk back to Mick’s car after it’s all over that he realizes something. If he’s a ghost, that means he’s got some sort of unfinished business, right? He’s not sure if it’s him being a dumbass or what, but he’s got absolutely no clue what that could be. What did he leave unfinished? What does he need closure on?_

~

A month. Somehow it’s been an entire fucking month since Corey’s been gone, and completely unsurprisingly Jim doesn’t feel like he’s gotten even a little bit better at coping with it. He still goes to call him sometimes, still looks at the hoodie he’d left hanging on the coat rack beside his front door with the hope that someday he was going to come back and bitch about how it’s his favorite and how he thought he lost it and take it home with him.

Jim’s car had been released to him after the accident, and though it was completely totaled and would never run again, he’d spent hours sitting in the driver’s seat and wondering why the hell things had gone the way they had. Eventually, Mick had ended up calling a tow truck and also placing a call to the local impound lot to give them a few choice words about how fucking stupid they were to give the car back to Jim in the first place. 

Now, though, he just spends most of his time trying his best to numb the pain with alcohol. It doesn’t work, of course, mostly only makes his brain fuzzier and sometimes makes him fall asleep, but Corey’s always still there, always at the forefront of his thoughts. There’s always that nagging feeling that there’s something he could’ve done. Logically, he knows that’s not true. He knows it would’ve happened either way, but… but if feeling sorry about himself’s all he’s got, well then it’s all he’s got.

~

_Finally, Corey figures it out. He figures out what his unfinished business is and feels incredibly stupid for not knowing it from the very beginning. As soon as the thought hits him, he can tell something’s different. He… feels different, though he wouldn’t have been able to describe how exactly for a million dollars._

_It’s not until he’s wandering through Jim’s house late one night - as he does - that he figures out exactly what it is that’s different. He can hear Jim crying down the hall. It’s not anything new; Jim cries himself to sleep a lot of nights. Corey’s not proud that he knows that, but he does. He’s helplessly watched it happen more times that he’d care to remember, and does the same thing he always does - walks down the hall and into the room, sitting cross-legged on the floor beside the bed with his hand on top of Jim’s. Neither of them can feel the motion, of course, but he’d like to think maybe somehow Jim knows he’s there._

_Jim’s sobbing, mumbling incoherently, and without thinking Corey mumbles a reassurance._

_“It’s okay, baby. I’m here,” he whispers, and immediately he can tell that it… felt different. It didn’t feel like he was speaking only inside his own head like everything else he’s said in the past month and a half has sounded. No, this… this was out loud. This was… real?_

~

“It’s okay, baby. I’m here.”

The words are soft and Jim can barely hear them over himself, but… but he’s pretty damn sure he did actually hear them. His eyes snap open and he looks up and almost legitimately pisses his boxer shorts when he sees… Corey, his Corey. 

He’s there, sitting beside the bed with his legs crossed in front of him and a pained look on his face. Jim’s almost completely positive he’s not a hallucination; he hadn't drank that much that night, definitely not enough to make him hallucinate. If he was going to hallucinate seeing Corey, he’s sure it would’ve happened long before now. 

“Jamie?” Corey questions the nickname quietly, and tears fill Jim’s eyes on the spot. Corey was the only one that had ever used that nickname, mostly because Jim had ripped anyone else who’d ever used it a new one because he’d always hated it until it had come out of Corey’s mouth. 

“It’s really you, isn’t it?” Jim asks, still frozen to his spot on the bed, staring down at his boyfriend in absolute awe. He’d been so sure he wasn’t ever going to see him again, and now that he is, he almost doesn’t know what to say, almost just wants to sit there and stare at him and take in every detail of his features and angle of his face and make sure it’s all properly committed to his memory. 

“It’s me, babe. I’m here. I’ve been here the whole time,” Corey tells him, standing and perching on the edge of the bed. Jim can’t help but notice that though he’s sitting there, the sheets aren’t indented at all. Corey’s there, but he’s not really and Jim’s suddenly fucking terrified that he’s about to lose him again. A sob slips out of his throat and Corey’s shaking his head.

“Fuck, Corey, I can’t… I don’t want to lose you again. I… it’s my fault you’re gone,” Jim says, and Corey’s shaking his head again 

“Oh, baby. Jamie…” Corey trails off, but Jim’s crying too hard to look up at him. Corey reaches for him, genuinely shocked when his hand collides with Jim’s warm skin. Jim’s head snaps up, and Corey can’t help but smile at the goofy shocked look on this beautiful man, the man he loves’ face.

“None of this was your fault, James, okay? It wasn’t. I know neither of us believe in fate, but this would’ve happened whether it happened that night in your car or if it happened the next day while I was at the studio or something. It would’ve happened, and it had abso-fucking-lutely nothing to do with you. I love you, you fucking idiot, and I don’t blame you for a second. I love you so fucking much and if nothing else I’m enternally grateful that I got to see your face right before I went, that I got to feel your arm on me trying to protect me one last time. If I was gonna go, that’s how I would’ve wanted it to be - with you by my side,” Corey tells Jim, and by the time he’s done speaking, Jim’s sobbing violently again, sniffling hard and swiping at his eyes with the corner of his bedsheet. 

“Fuck, I miss you,” Jim says once he’s calmed down a little, and he can’t help but feel a little bit better, a little… relieved, maybe? He’d been so scared… so scared Corey was off somewhere - wherever he was - upset with him. It was stupid, of course, but it hadn’t stopped him from being afraid of it happening. Hearing him tell him he didn’t blame him, that he loved him… it meant more than Jim would’ve even been able to put into words. 

“Oh, Jamie, I miss you too, but I think… I think I have to go now,” Corey tells him, and when Jim looks up at him, he suspects that he’s right. He doesn’t look as… vibrant as he had just seconds before. His form is sort of blurring at the edges, and Jim can’t feel his hand on him anymore. 

“What if I can’t do any of this without you?” Jim asks, and Corey’s immediately shaking his head.

“Of course you can. Of course you can do it all without me. It’ll be fucking hard sometimes and your ass had better never fucking forget me, but you’re one of the strongest people I know, Jim. You’re gonna be just fine,” Corey assures him, nodding firmly. “I love you so much.”

“I love you too, Cor,” Jim says, watching as Corey continues to fade until he’s barely there at all. “I’ll always love you,” he says just as Corey’s disappearing completely. 

“Oh, fuck,” Jim mumbles, leaning back against the headboard of the bed and closing his eyes, a heavy sigh rising up out of his chest. Somehow, he feels… at peace? He’s going to miss Corey every day for the rest of his life, sure, but suddenly he doesn’t feel so crushed by it. Suddenly, he does feel like maybe he can carry on and be okay.

~

_Corey feels as light as air as he disappears from Jim’s bedroom. He doesn’t know where he’s going, doesn’t know what’s happening, but it doesn’t matter. All he knows is that he did what he needed to - he made Jim understand how much he loves him, made him understand that he doesn’t blame him and that none of this is his fault. That’s all that matters. The last conscious thought he has is a memory of Jim kissing him gently on the forehead sometime years before._

_“Oh... fuck,” he mumbles as he slips into some sort of peaceful silence._

**Author's Note:**

> wheresyoursavior.tumblr.com


End file.
